Shrinking $\hbar$ as a recipe for revealing classical-like contributions in optical potential cross sections

Abstract

A simple recipe for revealing classical-like contributions in optical potential cross sections is proposed. The recipe is based on the fact that the classical-like properties are not expected to depend on the actual value of $\hbar$. This allows us to identify the classical-like characteristics of an optical potential cross section by simply repeating the calculation with different values of $\hbar$, and observing which properties of the cross section are invariant. This method is applied to the cross sections of a few optical potentials used to describe the recent data of light heavy-ion elastic scattering.